Faculty and Staff Notes

Professor of Hispanic Studies Sebastiaan Faber has published a new book. Exhuming Franco: Spain's Second Transition (Vanderbilt University Press) explores what is left of Francisco Franco's legacy in Spain today. For some, the recent exhumation of the dictator's remains from the massive monument in which they'd been buried since his death in 1975 confirmed that Spain is a modern, consolidated democracy. Yet in reality the country is still deeply affected—and divided—by the dictatorial legacies of Francoism.

Oberlin Conservatory jazz saxophone professor Gary Bartz, with producers Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge, has just released his first album in eight years titled, "Gary Bartz JID 006" on the Jazz is Dead label.

“He’s a luminary that has contributed so much to music culture, for decades,” says Younge about Bartz. “His musical ability is expanding with age and we’re honored to be a part of his world.”

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista presented his choreographic work in "Performing Public Histories" at the National Council on Public History Annual Meeting. In this roundtable, scholar-artists examine what the inadequacies and excesses of performance get right about history and what is made knowable about archival materials through embodiment.

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Chanda Feldman presented a talk, “Race, Language, and Global Belonging” on the panel "If Not Now: Jewish Poets and Racial Justice" at the 2021 Association of Writers and Writing Conferences.

Renee Romano, the Robert S. Danforth Professor of History and Professor of Comparative American and Africana Studies, published the chapter, “The Strange Career of Interracial Heterosexuality” in the new collection, Heterosexual Histories (New York University Press, 2021), edited by Michele Mitchell and Rebecca Davis. She recently spoke at the Dole Institute at the University of Kansas about the musical Hamilton, and gave the Harrison Lecture at the University of Western Kentucky on the topic, “Can the Past Save Us?: The Role of History in the Struggle for Racial Justice and Multiracial Democracy.”

Stiliana Milkova, associate professor of comparative literature, published an article in the scholarly journal "Gender / Sexuality / Italy." Titled "Side By Side: Female Collaboration in Ferrante Fiction and Ferrante Studies," the article proposes that a double creation of female genealogies is at work within Ferrante’s novels and in the critical field that studies them.

Yveline Alexis, associate professor of Africana studies and comparative American studies, was a guest speaker for Bloomfield College's Holley/Humanities Series on "Looking Back and Looking Forward: Discussions about Race, Gender, Voice and Power." She delivered a lecture about resistance in the Americas during the United States invasion of Haiti.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring uprisings, which swept the Middle East in 2011. Professor of History Zeinab Abul-Magd participated in the events in Egypt as a political activist and researched its outcomes as an academic. She has just published an article titled "Diaries of a Surveilled Citizen after a Failed Revolution in Egypt," reflecting on her experience with what she describes as a failed a revolution at the latest issue of the International Journal of Middle East Studies . The cover image of the same issue is a photo of her own, portraying the children of Cairo's slums after a new military regime moved them to desert areas in the outskirts of the discontented city.

In the same issue of the journal, Abul-Magd also published another article, "When Upper Egypt Spoke: Dramatized Rebellion," about subaltern revolts in south Egypt. 

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand has published an article titled "Sex and the City" in the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens, edited by Jenifer Neils and Dylan Rogers (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Ormand's article gives an overview of the legal, literary, archaeological, and art-historical evidence for marital and extramarital sexual activity in the city of fifth-century BCE Athens. He analyzes the regulations and social expectations governing marriage, sex-work, and the relation of sexual activity to civic membership.

Associate Professor of Piano Pedagogy Andrea McAlister has been selected as a Yamaha Master Educator. She is one of only five keyboard educators chosen from across the country.